Cela fait plusieurs jours que j’hésite à faire un dessin sur ce thème qui occupe pourtant la une de tous nos quotidiens depuis le début de l’année. Le sujet est tellement sensible qu’il engendre invariablement des réactions passionnées dans les commentaires dépassant souvent largement le contenu des notes ou des articles (on le comprend). Alors j’ai parlé du froid, des soldes, de la nouvelle année… Aujourd’hui, je poste quand même ce dessin assez léger et un peu périphérique au conflit. Je compte sur vous pour laisser des commentaires respectueux (et modérés).

Par précaution et parce que je ne tiens pas à le retrouver sur des sites plus orientés, merci de ne pas reprendre cette illustration sur vos blogs ou forum.

Après avoir fait sensation l’an dernier avec son Meteor Slim, sorte de roman graphique carré en noir et blanc, construit comme un morceau de blues, Frantz Duchazeau visite un nouveau genre de musique : la country ! Avec Les Jumeaux de Conoco Station, à venir mi-janvier chez Sarbacane, il met en images une aventure carrément allumée, farcie de péquenauds, où les personnages clefs, fameux jumeaux, sont un pur hommage aux deux horribles hillbillys les plus connus du Net. Complètement barré !

Même format, même traitement en noir et blanc, avec des pleines pages de décors de toute beauté, Les Jumeaux de Conoco Station font la différence avec leur prédécesseur grâce à un ton plus détendu et rigolo, et des péripéties à peine croyables, plus savoureuses les unes que les autres. On trouve des parents zombifiés, des persos idiots – certains se pissent dessus, d’autres pourtant proches de la tradition sont plus ou moins homos –, bref, la brochette de personnages hauts en couleur sert un scénar riche et enthousiaste avec le grain de folie qui manquait à Meteor Slim. Si le blues n’est pas la country, là c’est sûr, Les Jumeaux de Conoco Station sont aussi plaisants à lire que beaux à regarder. Quoique...

Les images sont © Sarbacane, Duchazeau.

Comment réguler la population et accroître la productivité ? En inoculant des bombes à retardement dans le corps des enfants bien sûr ! Sur 1000 injections, une seule sera mortelle. Et des fonctionnaires se chargeront de porter aux intéressés, âgés de 20 à 24 ans, leur Ikigami, sorte de préavis, annonçant la mort sous 24 heures. Ça promet !

Nouveau thriller psychologique dans un style très réaliste, Ikigami risque de provoquer de jolies sueurs froides et d’alimenter les débats sur le net, à la façon de Death Note, à l’origine de nombreux clashs existentialistes très passionnés. L’auteur, Motorô Mase n’en est pas à son coup d’essai en matière de récit psychologique ; on a pu découvrir chez Akata-Delcourt les quatre tomes de Heads, une série scénarisée par Higashino Keigo, où un homme lutte contre une double personnalité meurtrière, qui squatte son corps à la suite d’une chirurgie expérimentale plus que douteuse. Ikigami arrive en France fin janvier chez Asuka, alors que la série, en cours, compte 5 tomes au Japon et une adaptation ciné. Une des séries événement de ce début d’année.



Les images sont © DR.

À quelques jours des 80 ans de Tintin, le site Ain’t it cool croit savoir que le duo Simon Pegg / Nick Frost, à qui l’on doit les déjantés Shaun of the dead et Hot Fuzz, incarneront Dupont et Dupond dans la trilogie Tintin, réalisée par Steven Spielberg et Peter Jackson. Info qui reste à confirmer, on se souvient qu’une source proche du dossier s’était emmêlé les pinceaux dans le nom des réalisateurs

Socially-conscious Better World Books, a for-profit online bookseller that shares its revenues with literacy initiatives worldwide, released some pretty impressive holiday sales figures recently which we thought were worth sharing.

First, a little background about the company. It was founded back in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame who started selling textbooks online to earn some extra dough, and has now grown to a company with more than 200 employees. The store sells new titles, but also actively supports book drives and collects used books and textbooks through a network of over 1,600 college campuses and partnerships with nearly 1,000 libraries across the U.S.

Better World doesn’t charge any shipping fees for shipments within the US (and only $3.97 worldwide), and every order gets shipped carbon neutral with offsets from Carbonfund.org. Unlike traditional for-profit companies, Better World Books adds a social component to everything it does as a commercial venture. So far, the company has converted more than 16.4 million donated books into $5 million in funding for literacy and education.

It’s a remarkable company, and I’m really happy to see that they seem to be doing very well, and that they killed during the holiday period. Better World Books reports that its overall traffic increased 131% during the holiday rush, and that they saw a 500%+ increase in gift certificate sales over the previous holiday season. That translated into 194% revenue growth for the site in December 2008 (up until Christmas), compared to the year before.

We asked for some more details, and got some absolute numbers for the holiday sales: December revenues grew to $2.1 million and revenue for this month is expected to top $4.5 million (apparently January is always the best month for BW thanks to textbook sales). The company says it’s on target for $31 million in revenues this fiscal year, which ends June 2009.

If revenues in January actually ramp up to $4.5 million, that will match in just one month the amount they raised in venture capital from Good Capital in April 2008.

Not bad for a bunch of do-gooders.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Marvin Hier / Wall Street Journal:
The Jews Face a Double Standard  —  Why doesn't Israel have the same right to self-defense as other nations?  —  The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little …

Brian Knowlton / New York Times:
Obama Presses for Action on Economy  —  WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday urged Congress to act quickly to pass sweeping economic stimulus measures, including a tax cut and an infusion of as much as $800 billion, or face the likelihood that “this recession could linger for years.”

David Colton / USA Today:
Obama, Spider-Man on the same comic-book page  —  In a growing world of Barack Obama collectibles, one item soon may be swinging above the rest.  —  On Jan. 14, Marvel Comics is releasing a special issue of Amazing Spider-Man #583 with Obama depicted on the cover.

MySpace, Yahoo, and Intel have unveiled a joint plan on CES to offer consumers a way to use their favorite social network directly on the TV. Imagine a tiny application that shows up on TVs and other devices equipped with Intel’s special chipset that enables consumers to access MySpace and interact with their buddies while watching television.

Well, I’m imagining it, and I don’t see the point. It’s ok, I guess; but why would I want to do this over the television set? When you watch TV, you want to watch TV, and little else (except perhaps eating popcorn). When you want to interact, you use your computer - which is probably not that far away from your TV set.

Plus, I don’t see how this beats mobile social networking. We’ve got all these beautiful devices with large screens like the iPhone and G1, with fantastic social networking applications developed for them. With a TV, you’re stuck in one corner of the house. With a mobile, you can go anywhere and carry the social network with you.

This is a try to squeeze some life out of a notoriously non-interactive medium like the television, and - like all similar initiatives before it - it will end up nowhere. In the meantime the rest of us will enjoy social networks on our computers, handhelds, netbooks or mobiles.

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During the January 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin claimed that "Al Franken simply outplayed and outhustled the [Norm] Coleman campaign" in the Minnesota Senate race and that "the bottom-line lesson here for the Republicans is they need to get in the game with these things. They need to put Republicans on these canvassing boards, put them in positions of power to make sure that there aren't the kind of shenanigans that they say appear to have happened here." Similarly, in a January 7 column on the conservative website Newsmax.com, contributing editor Lowell Ponte claimed that the "selection of the Canvassing Board and the recount were controlled by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an ultra-liberal Democrat with close ties to the controversial far-left activist group ACORN" and referred to the board as "the liberal Canvassing Board." In fact, contrary to Malkin's and Ponte's suggestions, Minnesota's State Canvassing Board is bipartisan. Additionally, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said that the board Ritchie named was "fair," while a Coleman campaign lawyer reportedly said that the "state should feel good about who's on the panel."

As Media Matters for America noted, in a November 13 article (purchase required), the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported of the canvassing board: "Politically, the panel is diverse. [Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric] Magnuson and [Minnesota Supreme Court Justice G. Barry] Anderson were appointed by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. [Second Judicial District Chief Judge Kathleen R.] Gearin was elected in a nonpartisan race in 1986 and declined to say with what party, if any, she aligns herself. [Second Judicial District Assistant Chief Judge Edward J.] Cleary was appointed by Independence Party Gov. Jesse Ventura." Anderson is a former attorney for the Minnesota Republican Party, while Magnuson is a former law firm colleague of Pawlenty's.

Further, contrary to Ponte's claim that "the selection of the Canvassing Board" was "controlled" by Ritchie, the Pioneer Press reported: "State law defines the canvassing board as two state Supreme Court justices, two district judges and the secreta